


Slumber Parties

by fourteencandles (thingsbaker)



Series: Slumber Parties [3]
Category: Entourage
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3755110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingsbaker/pseuds/fourteencandles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the first things that happened after they came out to the kids was that they all moved into Vince’s house. The kids were a little resistant when Eric first told them that was the plan, until he said they could have any room they wanted in the house. Then they got really excited and started fighting over the master suite. Eric took that off the table, and both kids pouted through dinner, but eventually they came around when he reminded them they’d each have their own bedroom and bathroom, while he’d have to share with Vince. “Part of growing up,” he said, “is learning to share.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2008. No spoilers past Season 3.

One of the first things that happened after they came out to the kids was that they all moved into Vince’s house. The kids were a little resistant when Eric first told them that was the plan, until he said they could have any room they wanted in the house. Then they got really excited and started fighting over the master suite. Eric took that off the table, and both kids pouted through dinner, but eventually they came around when he reminded them they’d each have their own bedroom and bathroom, while he’d have to share with Vince. “Part of growing up,” he said, “is learning to share.”  
  
“Growing up is gross!” Brady said, and Katie concurred, and they both agreed they weren’t going to do it.  
  
Eric wished it was that simple.  
  
They picked out their rooms — both on the second floor, at opposite ends of the hall — and Vince hired a kid-friendly decorator to help them figure out how to redo things. Eric thought they’d just end up repainting everything in a few years, when Katie decided that lavender was no longer her favorite color and Brady outgrew his dinosaur phase, but it was Vince’s money. If he wanted to throw it at Eric’s kids, fine with him.  
  
After the kids moved in, they all spent some time adjusting to each other. They had all sort of lived with Vince before — when the kids were really little and Eric was going through his divorce — but now Katie was old enough to have an opinion on everything and Brady was old enough to ask questions about everything, so the whole situation was, at times, more challenging.  
  
Like when Vince didn’t come to breakfast, for instance, and Brady got up and ran back to his and Eric’s bedroom and woke him by jumping on the bed. The first time, it was cute; the next time he snuck past Eric, though, was on a morning when Vince had been filming until four the night before. The 7 a.m. wake up call nearly taught Brady an entirely new vocabulary.  
  
Or when Katie had a friend over for night and they stayed up late playing some kind of game about marrying people — Eric tried to get the details, but the giggling derailed him — and the next day, at lunch, she announced that she thought Eric and Vince should get married and have a baby.  
  
Vince nearly spit up his soda.  
  
“We put your names together in MASH,” she said, “and you’re supposed to live in a mansion and have three kids and drive a school bus.” She looked at Eric expectantly, like maybe he could conjure the missing pieces immediately.  
  
“Can we get a school bus?” Brady asked. Neither of his kids had ever had to ride a school bus, and they somehow thought of them as mythical, magical vehicles, far superior to the C-Class Mercedes that shuttled them to Wilshire Day.  
  
“More likely that than another baby,” Eric said, which made Brady briefly elated. “Sweetheart, what is this game you’re playing? It doesn’t sound like something a nine year old should play.”  
  
Vince rolled his eyes. “C’mon, the girls were all doing it when we were in school, too,” he said. He leaned in toward Katie. “I gotta tell you, though, no one I know’s living in a shack.”  
  
“That’s why you have to do it at least three times,” she said, and Vince nodded knowingly.  
  
“So three times it said we should get married, huh?” He looked across and winked at Eric.  
  
“No, the second time it said you were going to live in an apartment and have six kids. But I think that’s too many kids to have in an apartment. Plus if you had six kids that would take a long time and I wouldn’t be able to babysit because I’m going to marry Troy McClure and go to college and be an astronaut.”  
  
“Who’s Troy McClure?” Eric asked.  
  
“I’m going to college to be an astronaut,” Brady said.  
  
“Good plan, pal,” Vince said, absolutely earnest. “Lots of money in space.”  
  
“But if you have just one baby, then I can babysit it, and you can pay me and I can save up my money for the Tanya concert.”  
  
Ah, the Tanya concert. Katie had been talking about that since Christmas, when her mother had presented her with the tickets. The kids were going to stay with Tina in San Diego for Spring Break. Eric wasn’t really looking forward to it, except — OK, he totally was. He loved his kids, but a break sounded pretty nice.  
  
“Or you could do your chores and save your allowance,” Eric said, and Katie rolled her eyes. He was sure she’d gotten that move from Vince, but when he looked across at him to make his point, Vince was busy helping Brady arrange his carrots into a rocket shape on the table. Watching them, Eric said, “I have all the kids I need right here.”  
  
“But what about Vince?” Katie said, and Vince made a blast-off noise that made Brady squeal. Then, to Eric’s delight, Brady started eating his carrots. “Uncle Vince, don’t you want a baby of your very own?”  
  
“What would I do with a baby?” Vince asked. “They’re all smelly and sleepy and then I’d have to hire a babysitter —”  
  
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!”  
  
“— And she’d have to change diapers and take it for a walk and water it and —”  
  
“Uncle Vince! You don’t water babies!”  
  
“You don’t?” Vince’s face was a perfect mask of surprise, and he looked across at Eric. “Uh-oh, E, I think maybe I did something wrong when I was babysitting the kids.”  
  
“I’ve always wondered,” Eric said, and Katie started giggling. “They grew so fast, though.”  
  
“You watered us when we were babies?!”  
  
Vince shrugged. “I thought babies were like plants. I’ve been hoping to find potatoes in your ears for a long time.”  
  
The conversation spun off into magic tricks — Katie had seen a magician at a birthday party just recently and spent a few days trying to pull quarters out of her own ears — and parties, and they didn’t return to the whole MASH thing at all. Later, Eric had Vince explain the game to him, and after he saw the lists of names and the silliness of it, he felt, somehow, relieved. If love and marriage were still a game to his little girl, so much the better (though he was going to find out a little more about this Troy McClure character, stat).  
  
“Really, I think this school bus idea has some merit,” Vince said, when the kids were in bed. He was laying on the couch, his head in Eric’s lap as they watched a film by some new hotshot director Ari liked. So far, Eric wasn’t a fan at all, and if Vince was talking during the movie, that wasn’t a good sign.  
  
“Because that’s the one we could actually do?” Eric asked.  
  
Vince looked up at him. “Well, we  _could_  get married.”  
  
Eric met his eyes, surprised. That was definitely something they’d never talked about. “We could?”  
  
“I mean, it’s legal,” Vince said, shrugging. He turned back to the screen. “But then again, so is marrying your second cousin.”  
  
“I’ve seen your second cousin,” Eric said. “I’m way better looking.”  
  
“She does have six kids, though.”  
  
“Oh, well, by all means, then.” Vince smirked. Eric cleared his throat. “You don’t, uh, you don’t think she said that stuff for, like, any reason, do you?”  
  
Vince turned back to him. “Like what?”  
  
“I dunno. Like — do you think we’re setting a bad example or something? Like that we should get married?”  
  
“That’s about the worst reason I can think of,” Vince said. “I mean, short of me needing a green card or something. E, I think we set a pretty good example that you don’t need a fucking piece of paper to be committed and in love.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess we do all right,” Eric said, and ran his fingers through Vince’s hair. “Which is more than I can say for this director.”  
  
“Good call.” Vince grabbed the remote and turned the movie off. “Let’s spend our time more wisely.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
As the week went on, though, Eric kept thinking about what Katie had said. What about Vince? Didn’t he want to have a kid of his own, someday? He was a great step-dad to Eric’s kids, absolutely, and Eric wouldn’t in any way want to discount Vince’s role with them, but Eric felt there was something to be said for real, from-birth, full-on-responsibility parenting, for literally seeing yourself in your kids’ eyes or expressions. He started to feel a little guilty, like he was robbing Vince of that chance. But when he tried to bring it up again, Vince just sighed and said, “E, really, do we need to have the talk about where babies come from again?” That was not a talk Eric wanted to have with anyone currently living with him, so he let it drop, and focused instead on the upcoming vacation.  
  
It wasn’t really going to be a vacation, at least not for them: Vince would be back on set, after two weeks off. But Eric was looking forward to it, anyway, a week where he’d just be hanging out on set, maybe having a drink with the guys, just chilling out. No kids to wake up in the morning, no kids to put to bed. No kids to stay quiet for after  _they_  were in bed. Should be a good week, he thought.  
  
It wasn’t as though they never had any fun when the kids were there — they had fun with the kids all the time, and they even had some fun without them, thanks to “nanny nights,” when Heather, the girl they had on retainer through an agency, would watch the kids in the evenings. Usually, that only happened on nights they had business events, though sometimes those events were parties or premieres that counted as extra curricular fun. Still, having to go home to his kids made Eric unlikely to drink much, and it never meant the freedom to jump Vince wherever and whenever he wanted. This break would provide all of those features. He felt a little bad for looking forward to it, but not too bad.  
  
The night before the kids were supposed to leave for San Diego, Katie had a slumber party to go to. Eric dropped her off and came home to find Vince and Brady sailing plastic boats in the hot tub, where they spun and whirled and bobbed. There was some kind of complicated race going on, and Vince kept saying, “Close, buddy, I’m gonna catch you!” and Eric noticed, even if Brady didn’t, that Vince was manipulating the jets to make sure Brady won in the end. He went to the kitchen for beers and a juice box, and then Vince climbed up next to him on the deck to watch Brady playing more with the boats. Eventually Brady came up and sat on Eric’s lounge chair, wrapped in his towel, and Eric could tell he was getting sleepy but decided to let him stay up a little and watch the stars with them. He put one arm around Brady and rested his other hand on Vince’s leg, and Vince smiled and leaned over to kiss his shoulder, then Brady’s head.  
  
“If you really have another baby, can you make it a boy?” Brady said.  
  
Eric laughed. “You want a brother?”  
  
“Boys are more fun,” he said.  
  
“Aw, come on, your sister’s fun.”  
  
Brady made a face, and this time both Eric and Vince laughed. “Uncle Vince, you could have a boy.”  
  
“Pal, that’s not really how it works,” Vince said.  
  
“Katie said that when two people love each other, they can have babies.” Brady blinked up at Eric. “Don’t you love each other?”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, “of course. But — “ And Eric honestly, really didn’t want to get into this talk right now. Not with his six-year-old son, not just before bedtime, and certainly not right before he sent him off to his mother’s house. He looked at Vince, who looked both vaguely amused and alarmed. “It’s kind of complicated.”  
  
“Is it because you both have a penis?”  
  
Vince laughed loud and suddenly and turned away, and Eric took a deep breath. He sometimes avoided things, but he didn’t make a habit of lying to his kids. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s basically the problem.”  
  
“Oh. OK.” Brady just shrugged and settled back, and Eric did not look over at Vince, because he could tell Vince was having trouble not falling off his chair with laughter. It really was like having three kids, sometimes. “Can we go swimming tomorrow too?”  
  
“Tomorrow you’re gonna go to your mom’s house, remember?”  
  
“Oh yeah.” Brady nodded, and then yawned. “I can swim there, though, right?”  
  
“You bet.”  
  
  
Next to him, Vince seemed to be getting it back under control. He said, amusement still in his voice, “What are we going to do without you next week, huh? Who’s gonna boat race with me?”  
  
“I’ll be back real soon,” Brady said. “And you can even race my boat while I’m gone.”  
  
“Thanks, buddy.”  
  
It didn’t take long before Brady was asleep against Eric, and Eric carried him to bed, deciding one night without teeth-brushing wasn’t going to kill anyone. He headed to bed himself and found Vince already dozing. After he got done brushing his own teeth, he walked back in to see that Brady had crept in and fallen asleep right next to Vince, and he shook his head and fought a laugh. Well, fine, he thought. Tonight, it’s a slumber party. Tomorrow, it’s Spring Break.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
They got the kids off with Tina the next morning and then Vince dragged Eric back to bed. “I’d like to talk a little more about this penis problem,” he said, and Eric snickered, glad to see Spring Break was going to start well. They spent the day in bed, not creating new children or even talking about the existing children, and then cleaned up and invited the guys over for dinner. They were eating on the patio, just finishing a dinner of Drama’s grilling, when Eric’s phone rang. Tina’s number flashed on the screen, and he smiled. The kids, calling to say good-night. Eric stood up and walked to the edge of the deck to take the call, and it was Brady’s bubbly voice he heard first. “Hey, kiddo, you having a good time?” he asked.  
  
“We’re going to the zoo tomorrow!”  
  
“That’s great! What’d you do today?”  
  
He listened to his son babble happily, and looked back across the deck at the guys. Drama was shutting down the grill and Turtle and Vince were standing up, Turtle pointing toward the house. Eric was already lightly buzzed, and when Vince grinned across at him, he smiled back and winked. Brady was talking about what they’d had for lunch. “Oh, the dinosaur kind, huh? That’s pretty cool.”  
  
“Have you been racing my boats?”  
  
Eric turned to look at the pool; one of Brady’s boats was floating in the deep end. “You know, we haven’t yet, but maybe later this evening. No one can do it quite as well as you.”  
  
“I know,” Brady said, and Eric smiled. “OK it’s time for teeth brushing now so I have to go.”  
  
“OK, kiddo. I love you.”  
  
“Love you too!”  
  
“Put your sister on, can you?”  
  
There was the noise of the phone being shuffled, and Eric heard Brady yelling his sister’s name. He felt Vince sliding his arms around him from behind and accepted the beer pressed into his other hand. Katie came on sounding breathless. “Daddy?”  
  
“Hey, sweetie. Are you having a good time?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s been OK. We’re going to the zoo tomorrow, but then Mom says we can go to the mall.”  
  
Good luck, Tina, Eric thought. “That sounds good. What’d you do today?”  
  
“Lots of stuff, I don’t know.”  
  
It always seemed to work out this way — one kid would be talkative, the other in a rush to get off the phone. Tomorrow, he’d have to talk to Katie first. “Did you have fun at your slumber party?”  
  
“I had fun at mine,” Vince murmured into Eric’s other ear, and Eric rolled his eyes.  
  
“It was OK, I guess. We just watched movies and stuff.” Eric heard Brady making his best dinosaur noise in the background. “Is Uncle Vince there?”  
  
Vince was kissing Eric’s neck at that very moment. “Yeah, he’s here. He says hello.”  
  
“OK. I say hello too.”  
  
“I’ll tell him. Are you getting ready for bed?”  
  
“I guess so. I have to go brush my teeth.”  
  
“OK, sweetie. I love you.”  
  
“I love you, too.”  
  
“Good night.” Eric closed his phone and turned to face Vince. Neither of the other guys was around. “You know how to clear a deck,” he said.  
  
“Turtle went to pack the bong,” Vince said. “It’s been like a year since you smoked.”  
  
“It’s been like —” and, well, OK, now that Eric thought about that, it was maybe true. “All right,” he said. “But don’t get too mellow, OK?”  
  
“No chance,” Vince said. He slung an arm around Eric’s shoulders as they walked to the house. “Kids OK?”  
  
“Yeah. Katie said hi.”  
  
Vince kissed the side of his head. “You miss them yet?”  
  
“Sort of,” Eric said. “But it’s good to have some time to ourselves. Right?”  
  
“Very good,” Vince agreed.  
  
They smoked up and stayed up, playing pool and trash talking, and the guys crashed in the downstairs guest rooms. The next day, Vince filmed in the morning, then they hit the links in the afternoon, and Eric and Vince wound up back home after a nice dinner. There, they did something they hadn’t done in quite a while: had loud, messy sex in their bedroom with the door unlocked, and then went out to the kitchen — Eric in boxers, Vince in a loosely-tied robe — for a midnight snack. Just like old times. Eric was pulling some leftovers out of the fridge when his phone rang. “Tina,” Vince said, tossing him the cordless.  
  
Eric glanced at the clock. 12:13. This couldn’t be good. “Hello?”  
  
“Hey, Eric. I’m sorry to call so late.”  
  
“It’s fine, we’re still up. What’s going on?”  
  
“Uh, well, is Vince there?”  
  
Eric glanced across the island, where Vince was sitting on a barstool, looking back at him curiously. He couldn’t guess what Tina needed to tell him without Vince around. “Yeah, he’s right here.”  
  
“Could you put him on the phone for a bit? Katie — she had a bad dream, she just, I think she just needs to hear that he’s OK.”  
  
“Oh. Sure,” Eric said, stepping up to the counter. “Hold on.” He explained the request to Vince, whose face softened with concern.  
  
He took the phone and pulled his robe closer around him. “Hey, Katie,” he said. “You OK?” Eric listened intently to the conversation. Both of the kids had had nightmares when they were littler, and Katie’d had trouble sleeping right after their divorce. Maybe seeing her mom had brought some of that back. She’d never asked for Vince for comfort, before, but — well, Eric was going to take that as a good sign. “Yeah, I’m fine,” Vince said. “I’m right here with your dad. No, we’re just at home, not going out anywhere tonight. OK. Sure. Hey, listen, you can call any time, OK? Call here, or your dad’s phone or mine. Anytime. OK.” Vince’s eyes flicked up. “I love you, too, honey. You wanna talk to your dad? I’ll tell him. OK. Good-night.” Vince held onto the phone for a second, then handed it back to Eric. “She said she loves you and she’ll talk to you tomorrow. To us both, I guess.”  
  
“What else did she say?”  
  
He shrugged. “Not much. Just some kind of scary dream. Poor kid.”  
  
“Did she sound all right?”  
  
“Yeah, by the end. I think she just needed to hear that things were OK. She seemed better when she knew we were together and not going anywhere.” Vince leaned across and grabbed Eric’s hands, which he hadn’t even realized he was wringing. “She’s OK. She already sounded sleepy again. And Tina’s right there.”  
  
“I know,” Eric said, and he smiled when Vince bent and kissed his hands. “Let’s heat up this pizza.” They did, and they went back to bed eventually, but Eric had a little trouble falling asleep. The house felt strangely quiet around them, quiet and too big and too empty. He missed his kids.  
  
The next day Vince had blue-screen filming to do most of the morning again, and Eric had to do a little work in the afternoon, so he arranged to meet Vince for dinner. They still weren’t officially out in Hollywood, in that Shauna had never issued a release and they all refused to comment on things, but everyone in the world knew that Eric was living with Vince. Grainy pictures of the four of them on a beach in Malibu had been splashed over the cover of  _US Weekly_  not too long ago, and in spite of Eric’s concern that this would all lead to career failure for Vince and trauma for his kids, so far things were OK. There were cameras everywhere when he and Vince and the kids went out as a group, but if they kept a low profile and didn’t hit the hot spots — not that any of the usual hot spots were at all kid-friendly — then things weren’t so bad. And on a day like this, when Eric was traveling alone, he really didn’t attract that much attention until he arrived at the studio lot. There, though he was really just another manager visiting his client, he could see people recognizing him as Vincent Chase’s live-in lover. He ignored the looks and shrugged off the whispers, because a, fuck them, and b, it wasn’t hurting his career any. His other clients had actually seen a little bump in attention from Eric’s expanding media exposure. In fact, Brenden’s publicist had sent him flowers last week — which had made Vince jealous for about the same amount of time it took him to blink, but still, that was kind of nice.  
  
He spent some time with Brenden reviewing a script and talking through possibilities for an upcoming guest appearance, then they went to lunch with the studio VP who wanted Brenden in a supporting role in her next mid-budget film. After lunch, Eric checked his voice mail — a call from Ari but nothing from Vince or the kids — and decided to blow off the paperwork he should be doing and head for the set, maybe just hang out with Vince in his trailer. Spring Break, he thought, and turned up the music a little. He hoped Tina was having fun at the mall.  
  
In fact, the rest of the week sort of passed like that. Eric hung out on set with Vince during the days, and since they were mostly filming outside, they had the evenings free to go out with the guys or to stay home and enjoy all the amenities they usually couldn’t with the kids around. (He scheduled a pool cleaning for the beginning of the next week). Every night, he talked to the kids, and even passed the phone over to Vince a few times, which made him feel a little rush of happiness. He loved the kids, the kids loved him, they loved Vince, he loved Vince, everything was fucking perfect — and maybe Eric needed to cut back on the pot, pronto, before he started seeing sunshine coming out of the cracks in the ceiling or something.  
  
He was sober again by the time Tina pulled up with the kids, and they exchanged polite small talk in the entryway while Brady ran around making seal noises (he’d picked up a new favorite stuffed animal at the zoo) and Katie dragged Vince into the living room to show him a poster she’d bought at the Tanya concert.  
  
“She’s having nightmares,” Tina said when Katie was out of earshot.  
  
“Again?”  
  
Tina nodded. “Nearly every night. And I — look, don’t take this the wrong way, OK? But it’s got something to do with Vince.”  
  
Eric crossed his arms. Tina wasn’t exactly Vince’s biggest fan, and she’d never seemed to really believe that their relationship — well, that the sexual part of their relationship hadn’t started until after they were already separated. “She missed him,” he said.  
  
Tina shrugged. “Maybe. I just — I don’t know what’s going on with her, Eric. Maybe it’s — maybe this has all been harder on her than we thought.”  
  
He heard Katie laugh in the living room and just stopped himself from rolling his eyes. Instead, he ushered Tina into the kitchen, where they wouldn’t be overheard. “All of this, meaning Vince and I.”  
  
Tina actually did roll her eyes. “I’m including myself, OK? In the last year, her father’s turned gay and started dating a movie star, her mother got remarried and had a new baby and moved away, and she had her picture on the cover of a magazine.”  
  
All of which was true, and not really great to hear aloud. “What are you — what should we do?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Tina said. “We could send her to counseling, I guess.”  
  
Eric was a little resistant to that idea, but just because he didn’t want Katie to feel like something was wrong with her. “Maybe,” he said, trying to show he’d be amenable. He wanted whatever was best. “But — I think we should, you know, let’s see how things go. Maybe now that she’s back here and settled in, it’ll be OK?”  
  
Tina sighed. “Just have them call me this week, OK? And — we’ll talk?”  
  
Eric nodded. He followed Tina back to the entryway so she could say good-bye to both kids; she even managed a stiff so-long to Vince.   
  
“Wow, she actually acknowledged my presence,” Vince said quietly when they were standing in the doorway, watching the kids wave. “A tiny little thaw.”  
  
“Well, you’re pretty hot,” Eric said, and Vince snorted.  
  
Life got back to normal pretty quickly. Both of the kids had homework they hadn’t done over break, so Eric helped with that while Vince heated up a pasta dish their personal chef had left. The only thing different than usual was that they studied in the kitchen, at Katie’s suggestion, so that Vince could “help” with homework. It wasn’t a bad idea, since inevitably their study sessions got interrupted when Vince was cooking because Eric needed to help with dinner. Plus, he thought it was kind of sweet that Katie wanted to be close to them both.  
  
They got both kids in bed by 9 and then Spring Break really was over, because they stayed up to watch TV, not anything more fun. Around midnight, Eric turned the light off on his side of the bed, kissed Vince, and went to sleep.  
  
He woke up at two to the sound of a little voice. “Katie?” he murmured, sitting up.  
  
“She’s OK,” Vince said. Eric looked over and saw his daughter had climbed into bed with them, and was currently curled into a ball on Vince’s side. That was unusual in a lot of ways. When the kids had a problem during the night, they usually came running to Eric. And he couldn’t think of the last time Katie had wanted to stay with him. They’d have to talk about it in the morning for sure, but for then — if Vince was OK, he was OK. And Vince looked OK, so Eric just nodded and put his head back down, and fell asleep.  
  
They did have to talk the next morning, but Katie wouldn’t really say what was going on. “I dunno,” she said, when Eric asked if she’d had a bad dream.  
  
“Was that — was there something that made you scared? Is that why you came in?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was sleeping.”  
  
“So you — sleep-walked?” Eric raised an eyebrow, which Katie couldn’t see because she was looking down. “Katie —”  
  
“It must have been a bad dream,” she said, and nodded very seriously.  
  
Eric reached over and cupped her shoulder. “Honey, if anything’s bothering you — or if you’re missing your mom, we can talk about it, OK?”  
  
“I know,” she said. “Can I go get my books now?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
He took the kids to school and picked them up, and things went back to normal, except that night Katie fussed about going to bed. She even snuck out of her room, and Eric found her asleep in the hallway when he got up to go to bed. He picked her up and carried her to her room, but as he tucked her in she woke up and asked for Vince. “Baby, he’s getting ready for bed,” Eric said.  
  
“Can you ask him to come say good night?” Her eyes were wide.  
  
Eric smoothed her hair. “What’s this all about?”  
  
“Nothing,” she said.  
  
“Come on. Are you afraid of something? Did someone say something to scare you?” She shook her head. “Tell me what you think might happen.”  
  
“I don’t know,” she said.  
  
The door slid open. “Everything OK?”  
  
Eric looked back at Vince, then over at his daughter. She was looking right at Vince, and he stepped into the room. “Katie’s worried about something,” Eric said.  
  
“Vince,” Katie said, and when Vince was close she grabbed his hand. Vince looked at Eric, and Eric couldn’t quite read his expression, but he understood completely when Vince said, “Honey, if you want to stay with us tonight, it’s OK.”  
  
“OK,” Katie said, and followed them back to their room.  
  
It took them a week to figure out Katie’s new attachment to Vince. A week of Katie reaching out for him whenever he was nearby, a week of her getting quiet when Vince was out of eyeshot for too long, a week where Eric got a call from Katie’s favorite teacher asking if maybe she was sick or if there was a problem, because her homework wasn’t finished and she wasn’t raising her hand in class like usual. After a week, Eric was at his wits’ end, and he was getting close to agreeing with Tina, that maybe they needed to get Katie into some kind of therapy. The sooner the better, Eric thought, when Katie asked if she could stay up with him and wait for Vince to get home from work.  
  
“Tell you what,” Eric said, settling her on the couch next to him. “You can stay up, but I want to talk about your dreams a little. OK? The bad dreams you’ve been having about Vince.”  
  
“I don’t want to.”  
  
“I know,” he said. “I know. But I really think it might help if we talked a little about them. Just — just for a few minutes, OK? Just tell me what they’re about.”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“You don’t know? Are they about Vince?” She shrugged, looking down at her hands. “Katie,” Eric said, making his voice very gentle. “I need you to tell me what’s going on, sweetheart. I need to know what the dreams are about, OK?”  
  
“If I tell you,” Katie said, “then they might come true.”  
  
“No, that’s not how it works,” Eric said. “If you tell me, I’ll know how to be prepared.”  
  
She looked at him, and Eric concentrated on meeting her eyes and looking very serious. Finally, she nodded, and then said, “I think — I just keep thinking about — what if somebody wanted to hurt Vince?”  
  
“Hurt him how, baby?”  
  
“Like with a gun,” she said.  
  
Eric frowned. “You had a dream that someone took a shot at Vince?”  
  
“Lots of them,” she said.  
  
“Lots of people?”  
  
“Lots of bullets,” she said. “And — lots of blood. Here, and here. And here.” She pointed at her chest, then her neck.  
  
And that was when Eric understood, finally, what had happened. “Katie, did you see a movie where Vince was getting shot at?” She nodded, slowly. “Somebody showed you a movie where he’s a policeman, was that it?”  
  
“I wasn’t supposed to tell,” she said.  
  
Eric bit back a curse. Someone had decided to show Katie  _After Dark_ , the movie Vince had filmed last year. It was rated R for language and sexual scenes and because in it, Vince died a pretty spectacularly bloody death. Eric couldn’t imagine Tina would show that to a nine year old, unless she really had it out for Vince. “Who showed you the movie?” She shook her head. “Katelyn.”  
  
“We watched it at the party,” she said. “The other girls wanted to.”  
  
And then it really clicked. Fucking Julia. Worst goddamned mother on the planet, as far as Eric was concerned. It wasn’t bad enough he still had to deal with her flirting any time they saw her at school, now she’d decided to mess up his daughter by showing her one of Vince’s movies where he fucks some other girl and then dies? The movie Eric would’ve least wanted her to see — well, except for  _Medellin_.  
  
But his anger at Julia could wait. Right now, he needed to figure out what to do about Katie’s fear. “Honey, you know that was all make-believe, right? Just acting?” She nodded, but Eric could tell it was just reaction. “Vince is OK. No one’s going to shoot at him, baby. He’s not a police officer.” Eric put his arm around Katie’s shoulders. “Think about the movie, OK? Think about all the stuff you know is wrong in there.”  
  
“He doesn’t have a girlfriend like that,” Katie said, and Eric nodded. “He’s got us.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said. He kissed the top of her head. “I know it’s hard to watch. And I wish Chrissy’s mom had never shown you that. But I promise you, OK, I promise nothing like that is going to happen to Vince. He’s just fine.”  
  
“What if someone thinks he’s the bad guy, though?”  
  
Eric sighed. “That’s not going to happen. He’s — he’s played more good guys than bad guys over the years, OK? And everybody knows it’s pretend. Like when we go out, and people recognize him, what do they call him?”  
  
“Vincent,” she said, her voice still thin and uncertain.  
  
“That’s right. They call him by his name, because they know he’s an actor.”  
  
“Sometimes they call him Aquaman, though,” she said, and looked up. Eric felt somehow relieved by the spark in her eye, the return of the know-it-all tone.  
  
“Well, yeah,” Eric said, “but that’s OK, because no one wants to hurt Aquaman.”  
  
“Except the Shark.”  
  
“And he’d go after Jake Gyllenhaal, so that’s OK.” Katie smiled. Eric thought that was the best thing he’d seen all week. “Maybe we should watch Aquaman tomorrow night, you think? Erase some of those bad pictures with good ones.”  
  
“Yeah,” Katie said. “That’d be OK.”  
  
“OK.” Eric squeezed her shoulders. “You feel like maybe you can go to bed?”  
  
“Maybe,” she said. “Can you have Vince come say good-night when he gets here?”  
  
“I will,” Eric promised, “if you promise not to stay up waiting for him.”  
  
“OK,” she agreed, perfectly solemn, and then climbed off the couch and headed toward her room. When Eric checked on her a half-hour later, he found her already asleep but with her bedside light still on, and he decided to leave her that way, in case she woke up and was frightened. Vince had called to say filming had run long but he’d head home if he needed to.  
  
“It’s all right,” Eric said. “She’s asleep.”  
  
“Is she OK?”  
  
“I think so,” he said. “I think I figured this out, too.”  
  
“Oh, thank God.” Eric knew it had been an exhausting week for Vince, too, working all day and coming home to a clingy child and a worried partner every night.  
  
“Yeah. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, though. Get some rest.”  
  
Vince had the next night off, so he was around to watch Aquaman with them. He even acted out some of the harpoon-shooting scenes with Brady, and Katie seemed OK, happy, not worried. Eric was concerned that some of the battle scenes would be too intense, but both of the kids seemed to just go with it, though Katie did glance back once during the scene where Vince’s Aquaman kissed Aquagirl for the first time. Vince made a face at her and put his arm around Eric, and after she turned back to the TV he kissed him.   
  
“You’re way better at that,” he murmured, and Eric laughed.  
  
“I get paid a lot less.”  
  
“By now, I’m not sure that’s true.”  
  
After bedtime he told Vince about Julia and the movie, and Vince said, “I swear to God, I’ll take that woman apart the next time I see her.”  
  
“I’m gonna beat you to it,” Eric said, falling next to Vince on their bed. “I’d say there’s a fifty-fifty chance that I’ll see her tomorrow when I pick Katie up from school.”  
  
Vince turned and looked down at him. “Just don’t get in any fights, OK? I don’t want to have to bail you out.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Eric said. “You know me, so likely to hit a girl.”  
  
Vince smiled, and he leaned down and kissed Eric. Eric was pretty sure the door was shut, maybe even locked, so he pulled Vince a little closer and took his time with the kiss, running his fingers through Vince’s hair and around back to cup his head. Vince pulled back, just a little, still smiling. “So you really think she’s OK now?”  
  
“I hope so,” Eric said.  
  
“Me, too.”


	2. Chapter 2

She seemed OK as the week went on. Still a little clingy, sure, but not as terrified as before. In fact, by the weekend she was feeling OK enough to accept an invitation to another overnight — this one just her staying over with two friends, not a party, and not at Julia’s house. Eric and Vince stayed in that night, playing games with Brady, and though neither of them said it, Eric knew they were both waiting for the phone to ring. When it hadn’t by midnight, Vince turned to him and said, “I think we’re in the clear, now,” and Eric agreed.  
  
The next morning they swung by to pick up Katie just before lunch. A familiar Porsche Cayenne was sitting in the driveway, and Eric groaned as they drove closer.  
  
“What?” Vince said.  
  
“Julia,” Eric muttered. He’d avoided her all week at school, because he really didn’t trust himself to behave civilly and he didn’t want to fight in front of the kids. He’d hoped — naively — that they’d manage to miss each other today, too. No such luck.   
  
He slowed down, considered driving around the block a few times, but he could see Katie and her friend Susan standing at the top of the driveway. No way they wouldn’t recognize the car. He pulled to the curb.  
  
“You want me to go?” Vince asked.  
  
“Or me?” Brady asked.  
  
Eric laughed. “That’s kind of tempting,” he said, “but I should say hi to Gloria.”  
  
“You want me to come?”  
  
“Nah,” Eric said. He put the car in park. “Brady, keep an eye on him, huh?”  
  
Katie waved from the top of the driveway and said she just needed to grab her things from inside. So Eric followed her to the front door, dreading already meeting with Julia inside. Instead, he found Susan's dad, David, in the kitchen, and they exchanged brief pleasantries while Katie and Susan went to gather her things. “Gloria’s in back, showing Julia the flower garden,” he said. “You’re welcome to go out, if you want to.”  
  
“I’m not much of a gardener,” Eric said, and David smiled.  
  
“Me, either.” They heard a peal of laughter from down the hall. “They were up kind of late,” David said apologetically.  
  
“I hope you got some sleep.”  
  
David smiled, looking weary. They had four kids, two of them under three, if Eric remembered right. “About as much as always.”  
  
“OK, I’m ready!” Katie said, appearing with her lavender suitcase.  
  
Eric shook hands with David, thanked him for letting Katie stay (and she, politely, echoed the thanks). He took Katie’s suitcase and they trekked outside, Eric starting to feel like he’d really dodged a Julia-shaped bullet.  
  
Except she was standing at the curb, leaning into their car.  
  
“Son of a bitch,” Eric muttered.  
  
“Daddy!”  
  
Eric shook his head, managed a tight apology. “Hurry up,” he said, and they cut across the lawn.  
  
As he reached the car, he could hear Vince’s voice even over the chatter of the kids streaming across the lawn. “— Ever do that to one of my kids again.”  
  
“Oh, your kids?” she asked, and that was when Eric stepped up.  
  
“Katie, climb in on the other side,” he said, and then turned to Julia. She had huge-framed sunglasses holding back her perfectly color-streaked brown hair and a wide, lip-sticked smile.  
  
“Eric, hello,” she said.  
  
“Julia, get off my car,” he said. His voice sounded more tired than angry, and that was pretty true. This woman had been relentlessly flirting with him since Katie had started school, even when he was married. The stunt with the movie shouldn’t have surprised him, probably, but it had; he’d really figured Julia was an OK parent, because her daughter, Chrissy, was so sweet.  
  
She turned, her hand still on the car door, next to Vince’s arm but not touching. Vince had pulled away, talking to the kids in the car, distracting them, Eric hoped. “Your friend and I were just having a nice chat.”  
  
“I think he was just telling you to get lost,” Eric said. “Which I second.”  
  
She smirked. “That seems a little harsh between old friends.”  
  
“We aren’t friends,” Eric said sharply. “After what you did the other night —”  
  
“What I did?”  
  
He rolled his eyes but managed to keep his voice low. “You showed the girls After Dark. That’s not kid-appropriate, and definitely not for my kids.”  
  
“It was just a movie,” she said. “Come on, you can’t think your daughter would take that kind of thing seriously, I mean, honestly, Eric, she’s going to see it somewhere.”  
  
“No, you know what, she’s not, or she wouldn’t have had to, if you —” He stopped, because he knew where this was headed, and he really didn’t want to start yelling or upset Katie. Vince had ducked his head around to look at him, and Eric met his eyes, nodded. “Never mind. Just leave us alone, all right?”  
  
“Eric, really,” Julia said, and she grabbed his arm as he tried to walk past. “You can’t seriously believe —”  
  
“I don’t want to fight with you,” Eric said. “OK, Julia? We can talk about this sometime, if you want, but in front of the kids I’m not going to fight with you.”  
  
“Why fight at all?” she said, smirking, and Eric pulled free.  
  
He got in the car and pulled away without looking back, somehow knowing she was still standing there, smirking.  
  
Katie talked clear through until they got home, and Eric was grateful, because he didn’t really trust himself to speak. She’d had fun staying over and wanted to know if her friends could come over to their house soon, to which Vince said probably.  
  
At home, once both kids were playing in the other room, Vince leaned against the counter in the kitchen while Eric started making lunch.  
  
Vince said, “That lady is a piece of work.”  
  
“No kidding,” Eric said. “What’d she want?”  
  
“Honestly, I think she has some kind of threesome fantasy with us,” Vince said, and Eric laughed, once, mirthlessly. “I told her she’d better never do anything like that to either of the kids again.”  
  
Eric smiled. “I heard that,” he said. What he remembered was Vince saying, with such conviction,  _my kids_. “Fuck her,” Eric said. “I just feel bad for her daughter.”  
  
“Christ, yeah,” Vince said. “You know, I wish every kid had a parent like you.”  
  
“Hey, you do good work, too.”  
  
“Nah,” Vince said, stretching. “I’d spoil them. If I was in charge, there’d be a whole generation of 500 pound stoner kids.”  
  
Eric smirked, but he wasn’t ready to let it go. “Seriously, though,” he said after a minute. “I appreciate it. Everything you do, how good you are with them.”  
  
“They’re my kids,” Vince said — not possessively, just like he was stating a fact, the same way he’d call Turtle his boy or Ari his guy.  
  
“Yeah,” Eric said, smiling over at him, “they are.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Life went pretty much back to normal for the next few weeks. Vince kept working on set, Eric kept working while the kids were in school, and in the evenings they had dinners together and supervised homework and played in the pool. It was a more traditional family set-up than either Vince or Eric had had as kids — no fathers rushing off for third shift, no one yelling in the kitchen after bedtime. Eric loved it. He felt proud every time he came home.  
  
During Vince’s last week of filming, Brady caught a cold at school. Contrary to the usual pattern, though, the cold skipped Eric and hit Vince hard, and he barely made it through his final days of filming. In fact, he skipped the final day altogether (he didn’t have any scenes) and stayed home on the couch while Eric went to make sure that everyone was happy and to get the post-production schedule spelled out. He was on the lot most of the afternoon, talking to the director over the sound of set pieces being torn down and loud music from the trailers, which gave him a headache. Climbing into his car at 2, he hoped he wasn’t getting a cold himself. His phone showed five missed calls, three unknown and two of them from Vince, probably asking for soup or something. Eric decided that whatever he needed, they could order in, and just headed for home. He was tired and he’d worked all day; everything else could wait.  
  
The nanny was supposed to pick the kids up from school, take them to the mall for a movie, and then bring them home, because the original plan had been for Eric and Vince to attend the closing party that night. Eric had decided earlier in the day to keep that plan intact, because it wouldn’t hurt either of them to have a few hours to just rest and relax at the end of this week. Maybe he’d put Vince in the jacuzzi, then order in some dinner, open a bottle of wine. The kids would be back around eight; plenty of time.  
  
Instead of the empty nest he expected, though, when he walked in he found Vince and Katie on the couch, both tucked up under the same blanket, their heads at opposite ends, sound asleep. Eric checked his watch; 2:30, still definitely too early for Katie to be home. He dropped off his stuff in the office, looked around for a note and then, finding nothing, wandered back into the living room, squatted by the end of the couch and woke Vince by touching his hair.  
  
“Mm, hey,” Vince said, his voice raspy.  
  
“Where’s Brady?”  
  
“School,” Vince said. “Katie came home sick.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
He nodded. “I tried calling you,” he said. “I went and got her around noon.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
He yawned. Katie stirred at the other end of the couch, and Eric turned to her. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said.  
  
“Daddy,” she said, and held out her arms. He hugged her and then kissed her forehead, which felt a little warm. “I’m sick.”  
  
“I see that,” he said. He thought back to that morning. She’d been a little slow getting ready, but Eric had overslept, too, kept up by a night of Vince’s cold-induced snoring. He hadn’t thought much of it, and now he felt terrible.  
  
Katie, too, felt terrible, he could see. “Do you want to go to bed?” he asked.  
  
“I’m OK here,” she said softly, her eyes closing again. Eric tucked the blanket around her more tightly and glanced at the other end of the couch, where Vince was sitting up. He nodded when Eric glanced at the kitchen, then clambered to his feet and followed Eric over. He took a seat at the island, crossed his arms, and set his head on top of them. Eric poured a glass of orange juice and set it in front of him. “What happened?” he asked.  
  
Vince turned his head so he was talking to the left. “The nurse called looking for you. They couldn’t get you, I couldn’t get you, so I said I’d come get her.” He blinked and looked up at Eric. “They weren’t gonna let me take her, but Katie told them I’m her other dad, and her teacher vouched for me. We are  _so_  out at her school now.”  
  
Eric cupped Vince’s cheek. “Thank you,” he said, and Vince nodded and closed his eyes. “You look terrible.”  
  
“I feel it,” Vince said. “I gave her some soup for lunch, but she didn’t want much. Mostly we’ve been sleeping.”  
  
“Drink this, OK?” Eric said, pushing the glass close to him. “You gotta get lots of fluids.”  
  
Vince nodded, and Eric could tell it was an effort for him to sit up straight. He looked miserable. “Where’re you going?”  
  
“I’m gonna put Katie in bed, then call the nanny. Then I’m gonna put you in bed,” he said.  
  
“OK,” Vince said, his voice a little meek, and Eric felt a little like hugging him. Instead he went out and scooped up his daughter, carried her to her bed, and settled her in with a glass of water on her bedside. Then he called their doctor, to make sure he could safely give her some of the cold relief stuff Brady had had the week before, and after that called the nanny to see if she’d mind just picking Brady up from school and bringing him home. After she agreed — Eric would be paying her for the full evening, anyway — he went back to the kitchen and rubbed Vince’s shoulders until he stirred. Eric gave him a shot of Nyquil and put him to bed, then sat in the dining room, waiting for Brady to come home.  
  
While he waited, he listened to his voice mail messages — the first from Vince, saying the school had called looking for him, then two from the school, the first asking him to call, the second asking him to confirm that Vince could take Katie home. The fourth message was from Vince: “Hey, I got her. The teacher vouched for me since she saw us together last week. We’re on the way home. Call me.”  
  
The last message was from Katie’s teacher. “Hi, Mr. Murphy, this is Jolene Pratt. Katie wasn’t feeling well, and she asked to go home and said that your partner, Mr. Chase, could pick her up. I let the office know that this was OK, but I really need you to send a note to school when Katie comes back confirming that, in fact, Mr. Chase is authorized to pick Katie up from school in situations like this. We generally don’t allow anyone other than the parents or legal guardians to pick students up without written permission, but I know these are special circumstances, and, so — anyway, please tell Katie I hope she’s feeling better soon, and I’ll make sure and send any homework she has home with her brother. Have a good afternoon. Bye now.”  
  
Eric cleared the message, then hung up and set his phone down. Thank God for Mrs. Pratt, he thought, rubbing his face. He’d been stupid not to check his messages right away, stupid not to make sure he could hear his phone. When the kids first came to live with him, he’d been a lot more conscientious about this stuff; now, he had to admit, if Vince was home he worried a little less about making sure he was somewhere they could reach him. It hadn’t ever occurred to him that there’d be any problem with Vince going to get one kid or the other — he’d picked them up after school before, several times, and no one had ever said anything about that.  
  
Putting a note on file wasn’t a bad idea, though, so he tapped a note into his PDA reminding him to send authorization with Brady the next morning. When he heard the beep of the nanny coming through the security gate, he stood and started organizing a snack for Brady, working on autopilot. Things would be OK, things were fine, he told himself, but a little knot of worry stayed in his stomach anyway.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Even once the note was sent to school and everything there was settled, Eric still didn’t feel any better about things. He kept thinking up worse and worse scenarios: he’d be out of cell range and Vince would be called to the hospital, but not allowed to see Katie and Brady; they’d all be in a car accident together, and Vince wouldn’t be permitted to make medical decisions; Eric would get arrested for holding Turtle’s stash, and child services would take the kids away instead of letting them stay with Vince; or, in the worst scenario he could think of, Eric would die, and Tina wouldn’t let the kids see or talk to Vince at all. They’d all be left alone with their grief, unable to comfort each other, and Vince would have no rights to see them.  
  
It made Eric a little crazy to think about it. So one morning, after he’d hustled the kids off to school, he called their lawyer, Bruce, from the car.  
  
“OK,” he said, “the death thing, I’m not sure I can help you. That’s up to Tina, and short of Vince somehow adopting your kids — there’s no help there.” Eric nodded, as though Bruce could see him — which he couldn’t, of course, a good thing, since Eric was currently trying to clean a grape jelly stain off his cuff by sucking on it. “But the rest of that — other than advising you that you shouldn’t be holding anybody’s stash — there’s a solution to it. Get married or get a civil union. That gives him all those rights, and it’s easier to explain to an E.R. doctor that you’re married than it would be for Vince to start carrying around all kinds of durable powers of attorney all the time.”  
  
“You think we should get married?” Eric said, his sleeve dropping from his mouth.  
  
“There’s a nice tax incentive, too,” Bruce said.  
  
“There’s no other way?”  
  
“Like I said, I can draw up some power of attorney forms, try and spell out what you’re saying about making medical decisions for you and the kids in the event of an emergency, but things like that, places are going to require him to show proof. You guys get married, that’s an easy fix.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eric said, sighing, “because then he’ll be able to just pick up a People magazine and show them.”  
  
“Think it over,” Bruce said. “Let me know what you want to do. Happy to draw up the contracts.”  
  
Eric did think it over. He told Vince he had an afternoon meeting and went to his office, instead, and wrote up a list of pros and cons. Under pro, he wrote, “Legal stuff,” “Tax incentive,” and “Kids.” Under con, he wrote, “Ari,” then laughed at himself and picked up the phone. Thirty minutes later, he was in Ari’s office.  
  
“Is that blood on your sleeve?”  
  
“Don’t sound so hopeful,” Eric said, taking a seat on the couch. “I wanted to talk to you, uh, give you a heads-up. I’m thinking of proposing to Vince.”  
  
Ari, standing perfectly still in the center of the room, said, “Come again?”  
  
“I’m thinking of proposing,” Eric said. “To Vince.”  
  
Ari covered his face. “I’m gonna take a couple of deep breaths, and I’m gonna hope and pray that all the acid I did in the 90s is still fucking up my brain, because I can’t have just heard that sentence correctly.”  
  
“Ari.”  
  
He looked through his hands. “Motherfucking fuck,” he said. “Seriously, right now? You’re gonna pop the question and, in so doing, pop your movie star fuck buddy out of the closet?”  
  
Eric shrugged. “People already know.”  
  
“No,” Ari said, dropping his hands, “they think they know. The difference between them thinking they know and you telling them for sure is huge, E. Do you know how huge? It’s huge enough to drive another blockbuster movie through, unless your need for romance overwhelms it.”  
  
“I’m not really doing it to be romantic,” Eric said, and Ari crossed his arms.  
  
“I admit, I’m not up on the Vatican’s teachings recently, but I’m pretty sure you can’t win your Catholic virtue back by marrying him now,” Ari said. “And though right now I hate you, I know it’s not the money, because you could drain his accounts basically any time if you wanted to. So why else would you —”  
  
“My kids,” Eric said. He explained the school thing, and Ari turned a little pale.  
  
“Does Shauna know you’re out at school?” Ari asked.  
  
Eric shrugged. “I didn’t call her about it, it just kinda happened.”  
  
“There is nothing about this that I don’t hate,” he said, and picked up his phone.  
  
So that became a two-hour ordeal in the middle of the day. Shauna raced over and the two of them spent the better part of an hour telling him all the different ways that getting married to Vince were stupid, up to and including, as Ari said, he’d be orphaning his kids because “I swear to God I’ll kill you.”  
  
“Sweetheart, I can contain this school thing,” Shauna said.  
  
Eric was on his second cappuccino from Lloyd, who had been shooting him looks of blatant sympathy every time he scuttled in. He set the cup down on the coffee table. “How?”  
  
“The same way we’ve handled the rest of this. By not commenting, by saying there’s no story there. But the two of you, if there’s legal proof of everything the tabloids have been cooking up —”  
  
“Then what?” Eric asked. “ _Then_  suddenly it’s a scandal? If we’re settled down and legally married, then it’s a scandal, when the rest of this isn’t?” He rubbed his face. This is so stupid, he thought. “I don’t know why I came here.”  
  
“You came here,” Ari said, his voice viper-quiet, “because you wanted to be talked out of it. Otherwise, you would have already bought the tuxes and rented the church. The only reason you could possibly have for running this by me is that you know, in your managerial heart of hearts, that this is the wrong move, being made for the wrong reasons.”  
  
Eric stared at him, surprised to realize Ari was probably right. Of course, he wasn’t going to tell him that. “Yeah, whatever,” he said. He stood up, started for the door.  
  
“Eric —” Shauna said, and Eric turned around.  
  
“I haven’t even asked him yet,” he said, not really meeting her eyes. “So maybe this whole conversation will be moot.”  
  
“Pray to God,” Ari said, and that was the last thing Eric heard before the door closed behind him.  
  
He drove home, the whole conversation swirling in his head, his hands tight on the steering wheel. He still thought marriage was a good idea, but maybe Ari was right — his reasons were all wrong. He was doing it for his kids, not for Vince, not even for himself. Marriage was something you had to want. He’d learned that the hard way. Maybe the whole crazy idea was just that, exactly: crazy. He could just get the paperwork done that Bruce had suggested. The school knew, now, and it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to get some kind of power of attorney drawn up. Vince would call Bruce if anything went wrong anyway. He was stupid for worrying so much.  
  
But he couldn’t quite stop.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
At home he found Vince in the basement gym, working out with his trainer, a svelte girl named Lori. Vince was doing crunches on a mat while Lori, sitting by his feet, counted them off, and she looked up when Eric walked in.  
  
“Hey, there’s your incentive,” she said, grinning at Eric, and Eric smiled back.  
  
He leaned against the door frame, watching Vince struggle through a final set. His hair and shirt were sweaty, his breath rushed, his face red — one of Eric’s favorite ways to see him. Vince grinned up at him, and Eric said, “Hey.”  
  
“Hey,” Vince said, flat back on the mat, probably knowing exactly what Eric was thinking.  
  
“I’m done with him,” Lori said, standing up. She picked up a towel and tossed it toward Vince, then paused at the doorway by Eric, smiling between them. “If you want to get started —” Eric laughed. Whatever Ari said, people didn’t just think they knew. They knew.   
  
“See you Thursday,” Vince called, and Lori agreed. Eric heard her climb the stairs, then turned back to Vince, who waggled his eyebrows suggestively.   
  
Eric laughed again. “No way, man, you need a shower,” he said.   
  
Vince put his arms behind his head. “You know, it used to be, if you came home and found me all sweaty with a beautiful woman, you’d get jealous. Where’s the magic gone, E? Where’s the love?”  
  
“Lori’s a lesbian,” Eric said.  
  
Vince blinked. “Really?”  
  
Eric smirked. “Why, did you think she was hitting on you?”  
  
“Why, are you jealous?”  
  
“Of your tryst with the lesbian trainer?”   
  
Vince rolled his eyes. “Maybe she’s bi.”  
  
“Even then,” Eric said, and Vince raised an eyebrow. “I trust you,” Eric said, and Vince smiled.  
  
“Good,” he said. “You should.”  
  
“I do.” And that was saying a lot, actually. After his last marriage, even with Vince, Eric had felt shaky and uncertain for a very long time. He’d been so wrong about his ex-wife, and so wrong about himself, in the process, that it had taken him this long to get over it. But now he was here, he was settled. He was thinking about doing it all over again.  
  
Vince held out a hand, and Eric pulled him to his feet without thinking, easy, automatic. Everything between them was like this — easy, good. Not the way it had been in his first marriage. The way it should have been. The way it should be. Vince pressed against him briefly, one hand on Eric’s ribcage. What was he waiting for?  _Ari’s_  approval? “You could shower with me.”  
  
“I’ve got some calls to make,” Eric said, but before Vince could back away, he added, “But once you’re cleaned up, I’ll take you to dinner.”  
  
“No kids?” Vince asked, pulling back.  
  
“Nanny night,” Eric said, though he hadn’t actually arranged for that yet.  
  
“Yeah? What’s the occasion?” Vince slung his towel around his neck and started up the stairs, and Eric followed.  
  
“Does there have to be an occasion for me to want to take you to dinner?”  
  
Vince turned, from the top of the stairs, and shrugged. “No, but usually there is. Business?” Eric shook his head. “You just — wanna go to dinner?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eric said.  
  
“Huh.” Vince turned and walked into the living room, and Eric followed him through the kitchen, where he grabbed a bottle of water, and then back to the bedroom.  
  
“Huh?” he asked as they walked, but Vince didn’t respond. In the bedroom, he said it again.  
  
Vince shrugged, stripping off his shirt and tossing it toward the hamper. He sat on the bed and looked up at him, curious, maybe a little wary. “What’s up, E?”  
  
“What — why do you think something’s up?”  
  
He tilted his head. “Isn’t something up?”  
  
Eric shrugged. He crossed his arms, scratched his neck. “No,” he said. “Not, uh, not really. I just — I thought it’d be nice to have dinner together. Is that so weird?”  
  
“It’s getting a little weirder every minute.”  
  
Eric sighed. “I just wanted to have dinner. Talk. You know.”  
  
“Uh-oh,” Vince said. “Talk about what?”  
  
Eric groaned. “Nothing,” he said. “Just — talk. Like, you know, like couples do.” Vince kept staring up at him, and Eric felt his stomach turn. The thing was, Vince knew him so well, by now, that there was just no way he was getting out of this. He sat next to him, so he wouldn’t have to keep looking down at him. “I, uh, I was gonna ask you something,” he said.  
  
“Like what?” Vince’s voice was a little too bright, hiding apprehension, most likely.  
  
“Like if you wanna get married,” Eric said, too quickly, he knew, but there it was.  
  
Vince’s hand lifted up, fluttered briefly in front of him, then settled back onto his towel. “What?”  
  
“You heard me.”  
  
He nodded. “I — so wait. You’re asking me — “  
  
“Yeah.” Eric glanced over, saw how surprised Vince looked.  
  
“You’re asking me right now?”  
  
Eric shrugged. “I was gonna take you to dinner,” he reminded Vince, and Vince sighed.  
  
“E,” he said, “what’s this about?”  
  
“It’s about me wanting to marry you,” Eric said, looking at the floor. “I do. I love you, I want us to get married.”  
  
Vince’s hand landed on his shoulder. “I love you, too,” he said.   
  
“But —”  
  
“But I like things how they are,” he said slowly. “Things are really, really good now, aren’t they?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eric agreed.  
  
“So — I mean you really need a piece of paper to say, what, that we’re gonna be together forever? I’ll tell you that right now. I thought I had been telling you that. You don’t believe it?”  
  
“I do,” Eric said. It was true; he did, really, he believed they were both in this for the long haul. “I know you’re committed, I’m committed. I just — wouldn’t it be, I don’t know, I’d just like to make things official."  
  
Vince’s hand tightened. “E, you know I said I’d come out. Whenever you want, we’ll call TMZ right now —”  
  
“It’s not about that,” Eric said. “It’s not about other people knowing, or — or whatever,” he said. "I mean, how old are we, we're just, like, living one big slumber party or something.” Eric glanced over, saw that Vince was truly confused. This had all gone so wrong. He’d wanted Vince to believe he wanted to marry him just — just because. Because it was romantic and it was what you did when you loved someone. He sighed. “It’s the kids,” he said, slowly, and then explained what their lawyer had said. Vince drew his hand back, and Eric went back to looking at the carpet. “I do want to marry you,” he said, after there was a little too much silence. “Vin, I love you, I —”  
  
Vince’s hand slid onto his leg. “OK,” he said.  
  
Eric looked over. “What?”  
  
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s do it, let’s get married.”  
  
Eric had to swallow just to be able to breathe, and it took him another second to speak. “Why — why are you —”  
  
“You want — you’re asking me to be there for your kids. You’re trusting me —” Vince swallowed. “Yes,” he said, and then kissed Eric, and Eric was still so surprised it took him a second to kiss back. Then his hands slid to Vince’s still sweaty shoulders and held him a few inches back, smiling at him like an idiot but needing, more than anything, to take a moment, look Vince in the eye, make sure this was the right thing to do.  
  
And it was there. Vince smiled at him and Eric felt it, everything that should have been in the pros column to start with: how much he wanted Vince, how much he needed him, how much he actually and absolutely fucking adored him. “When should we do it?” Vince asked.  
  
“Uh, I hadn’t really gotten that far,” Eric admitted, and Vince smirked. He felt silly, suddenly, having this huge moment but without any ceremony, no plans, not even a ring to give him. He was still in his jelly-stained shirt from breakfast. “Listen, do you still, uh, we could still go to dinner,” he said, a little lamely.  
  
Vince smiled. “Yeah,” he agreed. “But bring the kids.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
They were married three days later, on a Saturday afternoon, in the backyard. The judge was a friend of Ari’s. The only witnesses were Drama and Turtle and Katie and Brady. They exchanged rings, hastily purchased at Harry Winston the day before, and fairly generic vows, then afterwards had a cookout and an enormous cake that Shauna had ordered from some fancy bakery. The kids thought it was a great party, Brady because the cake was chocolate, Katie because she got a new dress for the occasion.   
  
After the guys went home — after offering to babysit — Vince and Eric tucked the kids in and went back to their own bedroom together, locked the door, and had a nice prelude to the honeymoon they’d officially be taking when the kids went to Tina’s for winter break. Just before they fell asleep, Eric tucked his head against Vince’s shoulder, and Vince said, “So, you’ve done this before, do things really change once you’re married?”  
  
“They’re going to for us,” he said. “Shauna expects someone will have the marriage license by mid-week.”  
  
“Mm,” Vince said. “Well, that’s fine, they’ll get pictures of the rings tomorrow. You wanna take the kids to the beach?”  
  
Eric smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Sounds perfect.”


End file.
